Thought, if you were an AO balancer, what would you balance out and how would it be balanced?

Vet’s fix worked quite well, I’ve been using it very consistently since the update. Might even be a little too strong since its damage is still so absurdly high.

Acid and Fire are a bit too alike for comfort already; this would make them identical.

Been in the works since last patch. We’re hoping to have it settled on this patch, and rolled out with Nimbus.

Vetex doesn’t want to make any changes to Cannon Fist currently. A rework may come eventually, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

I believe that this is planned. Could be wrong.

Absolutely not. We do not balance this way. If we want to specifically discourage certain imbuement combos, synergies or other facets of the combination would be targeted.

This is also not to mention that Explosion + Thermo Fist was not as strong as Thermo Fist Warlord or Thermo Fist Berserker last patch; it was simply much easier to use, and had a far lower skill ceiling. The whole style needed a massive nerf.

Glass is in a pretty good spot, with relatively high impact damage, a status effect that synergizes with almost everything in the game, average speed and decent size. There’s nothing to complain about; I’d say it’s one of the most neutrally balanced magics in the entire game.

The only way you’re getting damage that high is with low % blasts, and heavy stacking of Drawback. If you want to call Metal’s Surge OP because of its ludicrous damage resistance, that’s fair, however I completely disagree with the notion that Metal is the best magic in the game in such a mobility-focused meta.

We’ve been discussing this a little and it’ll probably end up happening. Net-positive imbues (Shadow, Water, etc.) outclass Berserker completely. Warrior’s Aura prevents this from always being the case with weapons, but Berserker has no such contingency.

Thermo was undebatably the best Fighting Style throughout both the Easter Update and Brewing Update when used at its peak. Warrior’s perceived strength typically came from a lack of game knowledge, as Warrior’s AoE-heavy kit fell perfectly into the niche of a ‘noob-stomper’ class in 1v1s. Good players did not struggle with Vindicator or Ravenna Greatsword, whilst less skilled players had no clue what to do to counter them.

That isn’t to say that Warrior couldn’t be built more intuitively than typical setups; some players were capable of using Warrior very well at the highest level of play. Then again, its strength still paled in comparison to Brewing Update’s incarnation of Thermo Fist.

It’s said ironically quite often, but parrying is a very easy solution to many problems. ‘Holding G’ and bot-walking is a great way to get killed, but everyone should learn to block practically. Parrying has always been the easiest solution to countering slow, AoE-oriented builds that worse players typically find frustrating.

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Notes on Surge:

  • Damage resistance is likely going to be standardized, due to it being all over the place for no real reason.
  • Knockback could be made more intuitive; impossible to approach for slower builds reliant on cone-check.
  • Range may take a hit; far too large a sphere of influence for a spell requiring no aim.
  • We’re not looking at nerfing its damage at this time.
  • Interaction with Gale Gel is a bug.
  • Want to shore up inconsistencies with its varying effectiveness on certain magics; i.e. Poison Surge being useless until you hit enough Power for its status to deal damage, at which point it might as well be a magic minigun.

excited but slightly worried about this one. mainly because i have a light thermo fist warlock with around 200ish intensity at the moment with blinds that last around 4 seconds. hopefully it doesnt get gutted anymore than it currently is (i heard light got nerfed and i’ve seen how trash thermo fist is now)

apart from this i dont see any other good use of intensity other than wind mages at the moment

Light hasn’t received any nerfs at all. Thermo Fist will probably be getting CPR next patch. More info on Intensity in due time.

If Thermo Fist gets buffed so that damaging people with Thermo Fist attacks increases heat gain more than just using attacks, direct hits should increase the heat gain more than splash damage hits.

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You’d need a necromancer to revive thermo now

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It wasn’t supposed to hit this hard; there were actually some new features to make Heat a little more manageable that got ignored during the balance sweep, such as Heat decaying at half speed while charging energy, and the removal of Heat being able to drain whilst attacks are still active (this can be seen clearly with Selino and Rushdown currently).

We’re hoping to have it in a more workable spot by Nimbus.

well in the meanwhile I had to go from thermo glass to sailor glass due to how unplayable thermo is (sailor isn’t even that much better, there’s two bugs rn, firstly I don’t get my bleeding synergy, secondly sailor attacks don’t refresh the bleed dot)

one idea I saw and really liked for thermo, is attacks give way more heat if they hit their target, to actually reward skillfull agrressive play and now just mindlessly spamming moves to maintain heat

That seems good. Maybe that would work out better.

Can we have some more visual keys or warnings for lightning in the dark sea (and in general) it’s annoying af and I already made a topic on the subject.

it’s truly been an arcane travesty

Oooh, any chance you could share Pristine? I’ve had some short convos with Inferno in patreon chat about Intensity, and I’ve always held the belief that it needs more love than it gets- now it only finds niches in meme builds or hyper specific playstyles (Poison mages who want to turn Munera into Chernobyl).

I’m hoping it finds its true niche. It has no identity, which is said a lot, but its fairly important. It doesn’t buff statuses dramatically enough on most builds to warrant investing high, buffing focus/aura is ‘meh’ at best, and ult cooldown is only helpful towards two classes right now.

I read what Inferno proposed there, about a total change to its base function- which is nice, but I would also love to see it get a stronger focus in the way of status effects. Though sadly, status effect duration/strength is still only useful to a handful of magics compared to Infernos proposed wholehearted rework. (Not gonna say what Inferno proposed, that might count as a patreon chat leak, and I’ve got a clean record so far)

DESTROY EVERY single stat’s maximum amount.

It is not healthy to be able to run as many stats as it is currently possible in arcane odyssey, as this effectively turns pvp into a grind even worse than getting a trick room sweeper in competitive pokemon. We should NOT be getting 400+ of ANY stat at ALL, nor gaining health anywhere near 4000 nor dealing anything even close to 880 damage

Oh yeah also give gun and bow m1s airstall, because like seriously why don’t they

I can share the gist. We’re breaking the stat out of its niche and making it applicable to all builds. Some functionality will stay; some functionality will go. We don’t want it to overlap with other stats, and I think we’re on the right track. This is a big priority of the current patch, so we’ll definitely be providing you all with full details when it’s ready to go.

Don’t want to give any specifics since it’s all still up for discussion within the balance team. Regardless, changes are coming. Only real tease I can give is that its identity as a stat will live up to its name.

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This is mainly just a symptom of the Darksea’s placement in AO’s current level cap. We’ve received gems and enchantments that really shouldn’t have arrived balance-wise until the Nimbus Sea. Things should settle down as we continue to scale; this should be the farthest we stray capability-wise from what is projected for each level cap ever.

I’m not gonna lie unless the nimbus sea introduces NO new gear I don’t think this issue will ever be fixed (also why do gems exist like actually)

Ngl I’d like gems more if it was the secondary stat alone
but the extra stats is a lit too much like size, power, etc

an arcsphere with 2 power gems was stronger than a power amulet, except now you also get substats.
at this point, amulets are really close to becoming obsolete, when i believe they are supposed to be a core part of a build due to the massive amount of a single stat they give.

This game unbalanced ass fuck why is thermo fist warlock so ass now and all the otherbuilds so brain dead